“World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus, we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
Martin Luther King Day will be celebrated on Monday, January 17, 2022. Some people will just view it as a three-day weekend. Others will have already rejected his nonviolent method in favor of violence, threats, bullying, and agitation. But other Americans remember his significant contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and his continuation of the work of Mahatma Gandhi in India.
Dr. King was a highly-educated Baptist theologian who embraced the message of Jesus Christ to fight hatred with love; violence with peace; injustice with education and peaceful demonstration. He used his powerful voice to expose the forces of hatred, racism, segregation, and elitism in America. And he did not back down, in spite of threats, condemnation, and ostracism. He paid the ultimate price – assassination – and became a martyr for the cause of Civil Rights.
And yet, his message of love and peace has been rejected by many young people as old-fashioned, slow, and ineffective. He was too religious and conservative for their tastes. For them, bullying and violence are the only path to justice.
The ideals of the 1960s died because of two things: violence and the commercialization of those ideals. Most people abhor violence and will not support it unless they feel directly threatened. Right now, we live in a society where safety and security have been compromised by errant politicians. People have been hit over the head with COVID, government overreach, and economic uncertainty. The American people need reassurance and HOPE – not threats and violence. People who believe that violence is the path to justice may be in for a rude awakening.
Let’s keep the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. alive and well in 2022.
Dawn Pisturino
January 14, 2022
Copyright 2022 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
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THANK YOU
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You’re welcome. Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!
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Every word of ‘I have a Dream’ resounds when I think of him. He has left us a great legacy.
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You are absolutely right! Blessings and peace to you.
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Thank you for this reminder Dawn!
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Blessings to you, Ingrid! Thanks!
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dreamer of dreams
pastor
master of words
peace maker
flesh mover
rip
and thanks
for the dream
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Excellent poem! Beautiful!
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Dawn, I applaud how you presented this message to remind us of the impact one man made for all of us, all of mankind. 👏🏼 Many commend him, but yet do not hasten to embrace the depth of his message. I appreciate your warm spirit of keeping the dream alive through your parting words. Let’s see if anyone pays attention to your words and those echoed by others with the same messaging as we navigate through this brand new year! Have a FANtabulous weekend my dear! 🤗💖🥰
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Thank you, Kym, I appreciate your feedback very much! I wish you all peace and happiness, my dear friend. Have a safe and healthy weekend as I hear the weather is supposed to get bad across the country. Blessings!
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I appreciate that Dawn and as always you are certainly welcome sweetie pie! 🤗💖😘 Yep, the forecast says to be prepared, which we are as much as we can be, whether we are greatly impacted by the severe storms or not. You do the same where you are. I’m telling you girl, you can’t seem to take anything for granted anymore, including the weather patterns. All the best my friend! 🙏🏼✨💖💐🌞 Big hugs and smooches!!! 🤗😍😘
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As it goes, all highly developed organised cultures undergo cycles of violent upheavals followed by stretches of exhaustion and relative calm. The reason for this fatal cycle is that societies are being too long administered with outdated concepts that have run their course without anyone willing to take on responsible reforms until it is too late. The French revolution was a prime example.
The irony is, those simple-minded Cretans, who mostly call out to incite the violence, or are used by vested interests to do so, are the ones to have to lose the most, ending up in a state of misery afterwards.
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Absolutely true!
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Absolutely! The concept of peaceful civil disobedience has been virtually abandoned.
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The tide always turns, thank God!
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After watching the original release of the 1977 TV miniseries ‘Roots’ at age 10, I can recall how bewildered I’d get just by the concept of Black people being brutalized and told they were not welcome — while they, as a people, had been violently forced to the U.S. from their African home as slaves! And, as a people, there has been little or no reparations or real refuge for them here, since. In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, the narrator notes that, like the South, the Civil War era northern states also hated Black people but happened to hate slavery more.
After 3.5 decades of local, national and international news consumption, I have found that a disturbingly large number of categorized people, however precious their souls, can be considered thus treated as though disposable, even to an otherwise democratic nation. When they take note of this, tragically, they’re vulnerable to begin subconsciously perceiving themselves as beings without value. (I’ve observed this in particular with indigenous-nation people living with substance abuse/addiction related to residential school trauma, including the indigenous children’s unmarked graves in Canada.)
While the inhuman(e) devaluation of such people is often basically based on race, it still reminds me of an external devaluation, albeit a subconscious one, of the daily civilian lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations. They can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page in the First World’s daily news.
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That’s thought provoking. What rattled me was when I found out he “knew” he was going to be killed.
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He and Malcolm X both knew they were going to be assassinated. In fact, I believe Huey P. Newton understood that, too. They were all killed by different people/organizations and for different reasons, but the result was the same.
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Thank you for reminding me of his message of hope and conviction. I agree, we all need that in 2022 !
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Thank you for sharing!
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